40 Billion Apps Downloaded on the Apple App Store - News

Apple has announced that the App Store has passed 40 billion downloads. About 20 billion apps were downloaded in 2012 and December 2012 was biggest month for the store with two billion downloads.

"It has been an incredible year for the iOS developer community," said Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of internet software and services. "Developers have made over $7 billion on the App Store, and we continue to invest in providing them with the best ecosystem so they can create the most innovative apps in the world."

Apple said there are 500 million active accounts on the app store, as well as 775,000 apps. Temple Run has been one of the biggest successes having been downloaded 75 million times. DragonVale and Clash of Clans have made over $100 million combined in ads alone.

The Apple app store launched in 2008 and hit 10 billion downloads in early 2011. 25 billion apps had been downloaded as of March 2012.

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4Comments

Ok for some reason I can't post a reply, so I'll leave this as a new comment. This is in reply to Ganoncrotch:
Really? You use the fact that a mobile studio closed as a reason that mobile development is a bad venture? If so then console/PC gaming is screwed. THQ is going bankrupt, and here is a list of all the studios that have failed since 2006: http://kotaku.com/5876693/every-game-studio-thats-closed-down-since-2006. And that list is a year old, so you can bet there are more.
Also, you can't just divide the money made by the number of apps because not all apps are designed to make money from the app store. Take the Netflix app for example, as I am sure it is a popular download. The App is free and most likely makes $0 from the app store, but that fine because they make their money from subscriptions that people pay for separately. The app is just meant to give people another enticing reason to subscribe to Netflix.

It's all well and good that they've announced such big numbers as a good thing here but look at what these numbers really mean to developers. 40billion downloads = $7b worth of apps.... this means that the average value of an app downloaded is around 17cent, to make $1million at this rate you need your App downloaded just short of 6 million times. This is just a pipedream for everything that isn't angry birds or Plants Vs Zombies basically.
The thing is even right now we've got another article up here about Majesco closing its mobile gaming dev because of lack of profit in the area and with more Junk statments like this one Apple only look to draw more and more Developers into a very shallow puddle of profits, you're going to see a whole lot of people diving off the high board into it and ending up going burst on the bottom of the pool.

Really? You use the closure of a studio as a reason why mobile games is a terrible venture? If that is the case then traditional console/PC gaming is screwed. THQ is currently going bankrupt and here is a list of all the studios that have closed since 2006: http://kotaku.com/5876693/every-game-studio-thats-closed-down-since-2006. And that list was made almost a year ago, so you can bet there are more.

Also, you can't just divide the amount of money made by the total number of downloads because not all apps are actually designed to make money from the app store. For example the Netflix app is free, and I'm sure its a very popular download. However Netflix makes money from subscriptions, not from Apple. So that 17cent figure is a little skewed.

Really? You use the fact that a mobile studio closed as a reason that mobile development is a bad venture? If so then console/PC gaming is screwed. THQ is going bankrupt, and here is a list of all the studios that have failed since 2006: http://kotaku.com/5876693/every-game-studio-thats-closed-down-since-2006. And that list is a year old, so you can bet there are more.

Also, you can't just divide the money made by the number of apps because not all apps are designed to make money from the app store. Take the Netflix app for example, as I am sure it is a popular download. The App is free and most likely makes $0 from the app store, but that fine because they make their money from subscriptions that people pay for separately. The app is just meant to give people another enticing reason to subscribe to Netflix.

Really? You use the fact that a mobile studio closed as a reason that mobile development is a bad venture? If so then console/PC gaming is screwed. THQ is going bankrupt, and here is a list of all the studios that have failed since 2006: http://kotaku.com/5876693/every-game-studio-thats-closed-down-since-2006. And that list is a year old, so you can bet there are more.

ah yeah mate, if you press f5 here and it gives an option to resend the data don't click to resend because each time you do it will send another version of the reply you put up, can be pretty spammy if you mash f5 if it doesn't appear right away :D But yeah I know what you mean studios close down this happens, but the numbers still stand you would need 6million app downloads to turn that very small profit, would be very hard to put together anything more than basic apps on the budget the current environment allows.